“Conversing about Contemporary Sculpture.” In Glenn Harperand Twylene Moyer, eds. Conversations on Sculpture. Hamilton, NJ:International Sculpture Center, 2007; pp. 8-11.

Text © Robert Hobbs.

8

a out Contempor y Sc ure by Robert Hobbs

In this collection of conversations with prominent sculptors published in Sculpture magazine as early as 1998 and as

recently as 2006, one is made privy to the thoughts of a wide range of artists. In these interviews, each artist articu­

lates his or her rationale for making the type of three-dimensional work that continues to be subsumed under sculp­

ture's rubric. Viewing this art form as a necessary yet limiting hurdle, artists in this vo lume have understandably sought

a raison d'etre for their goals in concepts that extend sculpture's traditional purview However, they have refused to

become entrapped in their own personal taste, which most would refute as far too idiosyncratic and unpredictable

to be relevant to general audiences. Such high-minded adherence to historically based views are evident in Cildo

Meireles's interrogations of the ideological wrappings entailed by culturally defined spaces and Yinka Shonibare's elo­

quent descriptions of the British- and Dutch-manufactured cloth employing Indonesian designs that many African

nationals in the 1960s and 70s viewed as inherently their own.

The overriding question appearing in conversations with these artists, as well as with others included in this anthol­

ogy, is how to make art that is deeply felt without being merely idiosyncratic and how to create socially relevant

work without veering away from the three-dimensionality that all continue to regard as scu lpture's absolute basis.

In order to avoid these twin pitfalls, most of these artists have sought justif ication for their work in terms of a series

of alliances that includes one or more of the following (1 I architecture and human scale. (2) language viewed as

object and artifact, (3) the semiotics of chosen materials that they rein force. redirect. or obstruct, (4) the terms of

their selected space or site, which helps to set the terms of their work, and (5) the spaces between known variables

that may extend social, conventional, and even philosophical orientations.

In a word, what each artist is seeking is an allegory that will superintend and justify his or her work, endowing it

with meaning and relevance, while allowing exploration of a range of ideas of particular interest. Allegories in

recen t sculpture have often assumed the form of referential and generative narratives. which can refer to icono­

graphic meaning, values, artistic tropes. and even aesthetic convent ions as long as they are viewed as symbolic

means for interpreting works of art. Although this quest for allegory in sculpture goes back to the mid-20th century

when Modernism's tenets were beginning to be questioned, it was not recognized as such at the time because

Modernist rhetoric continued to demand an aesthetics of presence and self-revelation and thereby precluded

acknowledging allegory's manner of subsuming art under an overarchmg aegis. Admitting allegory as a goal would

have substituted absence for presence and deferral for immediate and even transparent meaning.

In the early and mid -'60s, metaphor-the poetic conjunction of dissimilar elements into a singular hybrid-was

beginning to be questioned as a dominant sculptural trope by such Minimalists as Donald Judd and Robert Morris.

They wished to obviate the strictures of virtual space, which had blanketed traditional sculpture 1n auras of suffused

artiness at the same time that it precluded sculpture from taking a cold bracing walk in the world. Instead of creating

such theatrical and virtual spaces as the one highlighted in Giacomelli's Hands Holding the Void (Invisible Object)

(1934). Judd and Morris wished to ascertain differences and similarities between sculpture and ordinary objects

While Judd focused on the special qualities of objects that made them into a new type of non-metaphorical sculp­

ture. Morris began to mine ideas contained in the recently translated writings of the French phenomenologist

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61 ). Wishing to depart from the grand Cartesian tradition initiated in the 17th century

by the rationalist Rene Descartes, who had established a widely accep ted basis for a mentally conceived universe.

Merleau-Ponty re-inscribed the specificity of a body-centered approach. This phenomenologist's theories. in con­

junction with a Marcel Duchamp revival well undervvay in the early '60s. enabled Morris to focus on interactions

between actual viewers and the art context catalyzed by his seeming ly sub-aesthetic objects. This interaction was

predicated on viewing art in structurali st terms. i e, looking at individual works of art in terms of overarching rules

resulting in interstitial connections-a view in its ascendancy in the early '60s due to the popularity of Claude Levi­

Strauss's cultural anthropology. (This approach is somewhat related. to allegory, even though structuralism's terms

are usually implicit. being deduced after the fact, while allegories are consciously evoked and therefore generative.)

In the mid-20th century Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology ushered in an era of installation art predicated on integral rela­

tionships between human subjects and aspects of their habitual world, which were reconfigured to make them strange

enough to elicit the type of eidetic reduction (bracketing) that phenomenologists have deemed necessary

for understanding. This related emphaSIS on phenomenology and installation art paved the way for the hegemony

of architectural sculpture and for sculptors who have been trained as architects. This collection of conversations incorpo­

rates men and women who studied architecture both formally and informally, including Alfredo Jaar and Maya Lin.

In regard to scu lpture's affiliations with architecture, it's worth noting that Miroslaw Balka, who continues to use his

childhood home as a studio. refers all of his works back to his personal history and chooses mathematical titles for

his art based on his own size. In consideration of Balka's approach, we can readily conclude that both phenomenol­

ogy and architecture play crucial formative roles in his art. The Cuban collective Los Carpinteros has similar ly cho­

sen to forge alliances between human scale and art by working in the gap between furniture and sculpture. as they

create strange chests of drawers in the form of such objects as hand grenades. Both Balka's and Los Carpinteros's

works extend outward to encompass viewers in their space, making their size and relationship to the work an essen­

tial component. thereby creating the type of dialogic exchanges between the two that Richard Deacon views as deci­

sive for his art as well.

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In addition to emphasizing spectators' integral role in the creation of works of art, Merleau-Pontian phenomenology

has encouraged sculptors to think about the subject's place in reference to the work they create. Tim Hawkinson has

described the perspective of his work as "being inside looking out," particularly when he maps his own view of his

skin as if it were flayed Intrigued with the curvature of the earth, Maya Lin makes us all subjects of our own plan­

etary projection; in her sculptures she focuses on landscape elements, inviting viewers to walk through them and

share their space. Maurizio Cattelan mentions "the possibility of changing masks and roles" and notes his interest,

figuratively speaking, "in discovering the service entrance and the back stair in each building," thus underscoring the

way that a phenomenological outlook has set the stage for all his art.

Beginning in the 1960s, all of these changes had enormous ramifications because the new initiatives seemed to

remove the huge proviso of artifice from the field of art. Allegories. structuralism, and phenomenology, working sep­

arately and sometimes in tandem, permitted real objects and barely transformed materials to be brought into the

realm of art as long as they were presented in terms of one or more of these overriding concepts that played on art's

structure and/or context. as well as the viewer's awareness of it. Rather than having to make works that are self­

sufficient by virtue of being self-revealing, artists could select prosaic and seemingly untransformed materials as

sculpture. making their work appear fresh and direct. Their straightforvvardness appeared to be on a par with the

almost clinical, positivistic descriptions appearing in narratives by the 1\Jew-Wave French writer and former agrono­

mist Alain Robbe-Grillet, who similarly subjected his descriptions to oH-frame allegorical structures such as the

emotion jealousy in one of his most notable novels bearing this word as its title. This emphasis on the here and now

in contemporary sculpture, which can also be viewed in terms of allegorical and/or structuralist terms, has taken

many forms over the last half century. It can be found in the Merleau-Pontian phenomenological outlook central to

Sue de Beer's furniture props that comfort viewers as they watch her gothic videos. the Kantian-inspired mathe­

matical sublime inspired by Tara Donovan's use of ordinary materials like pencils and Scotch-tape multiplied into

thousands of components. the objectification of individuality that serves as a basis for Ron Mueck's interplays

between figures that appear as stirring presences before shrinking into the guise of mere objects. the reification of

Tom Sachs's purposefully jerry-built bricolages with designer labels, and the metonyms giving rise to Marc Quinn's

use of non-aestheticized materials like his own blood and feces. which refer back to the artist's putative presence

and even more compelling absence.

These artists and the others interviewed in this book depend on their chosen materials-and not themselves-to refer to

allegorical and/or structural meanings. Relying on a host of Eastern systems of belief to endow his materials with meaning,

Wolfgang Laib regards his collected pollen, for example, as capable of healing without any spiritual overlay. He has stated,

in almost a Zen fashion, "For me, the sky is much more important than trying to make a painting that is a symbol for the sky.

For me, it's the pollen itself that is the miracle in which I participate in my daily life when I collect the pollen It's not mine."

Similarly, Beverly Pepper invokes cast iron as her signature sculptural material. For Pepper, an American expatriate

living in Italy and aware of the grand tradition of Etruscan iron sculpture, this material is commendable for its force

and connotations of timelessness since it can remain buried in the soil for thousands of years without decomposing.

Brought up in a family adhering to fundamentalist religious beliefs. Liza Lou plays on the contradictions of ersatz

glass beads, which bring attention to dreary overlooked aspects of daily life such as "dust balls, dirty dishes, a closet full

of cleaning equipment. a common backyard," thereby dramatizing the everyday at the same time she makes her highly

artificial beaded objects-playing on a tacky form of transcendence-appear more real and even a little mundane.

While this book of conversations with sculptors contains remarkable insights into the ways that sculpture changed

abruptly in the mid-20th century from being the "handmaiden to painting," according to Richard Serra, to becoming

intimately involved with the physical world in many of its guises. this book is not intended to be a linear history of

the period. It is a peripatetic and incisive journey of individual soundings, consisting of candid views playing oH sus­

tained analysis, deeply held values balancing momentary insights, and personality quirks dramatizing long-term

emotional involvement. Some interviews are retrospective in their outlook, while others are involved with the chal­

lenges of specific works. And some are analytical and almost philosophical in their approach, while still others are

intuitive. Although these exchanges can be read sequentially from beginning to end, they can also be considered

spontaneously as one leafs through this volume and catches the flavor of first one exchange and then another.

Perhaps, the most important contribution these discussions make to our overall understanding of contemporary

sculpture is the extraordinary range of personalities involved in this endeavor. This book allows us sustained

glimpses of a group of remarkable sculptors; at the same time, it helps to demystify recent art so that we can under­

stand it as a route for thoughtful and sensitive individuals to communicate three-dimensionally through the semi­

otics of their materials their understanding of the present-day situation and its relevance for us all.

Robmt Hobb

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